We opened our pool today, . . .

. . .which is always a nice kind of summer thing to do although it doesn't have anything to do with writing.  It could have had something to do with the great Anglo-Saxon oral tradition of cursing, though, because the pump decided not to work.  But, I decided not to turn the air blue with oaths, when the pool was such a pretty blue even without a pump moving the water.  

     I am happily back to rewriting TISHA AND THE GIANT.  There's one section that I haven't got to yet, which really needs to be rewritten, I think.  In the story, the 15 year old boy who calls himself the GIANT and imagines he is a superhero,  (he's not delusional--just simple, sweet, and possessed of an overactive imagination) is the only one aware that Tisha, his math tutor and the subject of his huge crush, is being stalked by a psycho, who saw her picture next to a column she wrote for the local newspaper.  Because he knows no one will believe him, and because he has made himself responsible for Tisha, he decides he must do battle with the psycho, who he calls the Lump.  On a Friday night, he knows where the Lump is waiting for Tisha and goes there in his homemade giant costume, which consists of an overly large t-shirt and a store bought mask,.  He also carries a lead pipe which he imagines is a mace.  He read about maces in a book about knights and battles.  

     My problem is that for this story to work the Giant must defeat the Lump, kill him, in fact, because otherwise the Lump will certainly kill the Giant.  And how to write that scene well, challenges me.  Over the next couple of days, I think I'll probably post some snippets from that section of TISHA and hope that some of you phantom readers out there will comment on the snippets' effectiveness.